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Nature of course request C02685 :

New course

Undergraduate

First term offered :
Course Prefix&Number	Descriptive Title	Credits/Hours
LING136	Academic Discourse for International Students	4 - 0

Abbreviation for Class Schedule(20 spaces) ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

Catalog Description: Analysis of academic discourse in a variety of disciplines in order to understand the language demands of college level reading and writing tasks with emphasis on sentence fluency and strategies for reading comprehension and vocabulary development. Prerequisite: Writing 115 for International Students.

Course Goal and Objectives: The primary goal of this course is for International Student English Language Learners to strengthen their productive and receptive language skills in the context of academic reading and writing in their particular majors. Each student will demonstrate his or her achievement through meeting following objectives: ¿ analyzing a variety of texts written about a topic related to his or her major in different genres (e.g., newspaper articles, websites, academic journal articles) ¿ comparing and contrasting the global organization, sentence structure, lexical choices, and use of outside sources in different genres on topics related to the student¿s major ¿ formal and informal practice in writing different genres with emphasis on topics related to the student¿s major ¿ becoming proficient in using basic grammatical/linguistic terms to describe the sentence structure of others¿ writing and his or her own ¿ observing an introductory or upper-division course in his or her major ¿ collecting and analyzing assigned readings for the course being observed ¿ using multiple strategies including sentence analysis skills and vocabulary resources to understand, summarize, and paraphrase complex texts in his or her major ¿ collecting and analyzing example student work for the course being observed ¿ self-analysis of the student¿s own strengths and weaknesses as a language learner and formulation of a plan for future language growth

Justification for adding the course (e.g. alignment with other institutions, program revision, etc.): This course is a much needed addition to the current academic English support in place for international students. Most of the incoming international students at WOU do not possess the level of Academic English proficiency that would allow them to comfortably succeed in college level academic courses. The only other course specifically for international students (currently optional, but required starting fall 2013) is Writing 115: College Writing I for International Students; however, the goals of that course do not allow for extensive focus on academic language forms (lexical and grammatical structures) in context. The need to teach the writing process, rhetorical structures of American academic writing, and appropriate citation and referencing practices, while requiring extensive practice in writing with instructor feedback precludes detailed instruction of English sentence structure which is necessary for decoding and producing complex texts. LING 135 will fill that gap by providing a course that contextualizes instruction in sentence fluency and accuracy by examining the language of reading and writing assignments that students will encounter when they enroll in courses in their majors. Students will take this course concurrently with WR135 during their second term at WOU. The overall design of the course, in which students apply the study of language to the language used in the academic field they will be majoring in, is based on the `bridge program¿ model that is successfully used at many universities to transition international students from language intensive classes to college level coursework.

Faculty and facilities needed: This course will initially be taught by Dr. Rob Troyer, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Office of International Student Academic Support. After its pilot term, it may also be taught by the NTT specialist in ESL Writing who will teach the international sections of WR115 and 135.

Brief Course outline: Week 1: Genres and Style; Analysis of examples in your major Week 2: Basic Sentence Structures in Academic Discourse Week 3: Elaborated Sentence Structures in Academic Discourse Week 4: Observations of other courses; Analysis of Academic Textbooks Week 5: Sentence Structure Analysis for Summarizing and Paraphrasing Week 6: Midterm Exam; Analysis of Assignments from other courses Week 7: Analysis of Example Student Work in other courses Week 8: Stylistic Analysis of students¿ own writing Week 9: Editing for Accuracy Week 10: Discourse Communities; Term Paper Due Final Exam

Approval Queue C02685

Attached Files: